


Introductory Italian

by nahco3



Series: Introductory Italian [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You thought I was pretending to move to Milan so I could shack up with you for a few days?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Introductory Italian

The first day of David Villa’s retirement, he spends in bed, because why the fuck not. He wakes up reflexively at 6:30 for morning lift, and again at 9 in a panic because he missed morning lift and Xavi’s going to end his miserable life. But then he looks at his phone and realizes that the season, and the post-season celebrations, are over, and so, after weeks of agonizing and talking his his doctors, coaches and teammates, is his career. He played his last game, he won his last title. He stays in bed.  
  
The next day he putters uselessly around his house, cleans things. He goes for a long run and works out in the back yard because he’s not going to be one of those ex-footballers who gains all the weight he never could when he was playing. Anyway, he retired now and not in another two or three years, not after a lucrative stint in Asia or the US, so that he could live out the rest of his life with fewer permanent aches and scars. He intends to enjoy his still mostly-functioning body.  
  
He spends much of the third day seriously wondering how the fuck darts are considered a legitimate sport.  
  
“How the fuck are darts a sport?” he says into his phone. He’s leaving Xavi a rambling message about these and other serious concerns. “Also, should I do commentary? I feel like I’d probably be good at it.” The message ends up being ten minutes long, but David doesn’t really care.  
  
It takes Xavi three days to call him back, and in the interim David has gone on a ten mile run, reorganized his entire spice rack, first alphabetically and then, later, by functionality and frequency of use.  
  
“Do you think I should become a commentator?” David asks Xavi. He’s making himself dinner, another new hobby, and right now he’s chopping garlic for gazpacho.  
  
“No,” Xavi says, “they’d fire you in about two seconds, you get too angry about bad assists.” David is about to defend himself and also point out that is extraordinarily hypocritical of Xavi to say, considering Xavi winces and sometimes yells at people when they misplace back passes, which are about nine million times less important than assists. But instead Xavi says:  
  
“I wanted to call you about the youth teams,” and then David is sucked into a horrific forty-minute conversation about teaching five-year-olds how to do keepy-uppys.  
  
“I don’t want a job at La Masia,” David says, finally, resting his head in his hands. “I just. I don’t.”  
  
“Why?” Xavi asks, pressing hard and never giving an inch. David thinks about the times he’s admired Xavi’s tenacity.  
  
“This isn’t my home,” David says, “and this is not my club, and I don’t want to enter into some fucking monastic existence and help angsty teens find themselves.”  
  
“Ok then,” Xavi says, and David knows he’s offended Xavi somehow.  
  
“Look, I’m sorry,” David says, “really. I love Barcelona, and I’m grateful for everything the club has done me but. But I’m not ready for this.”  
  
“I understand,” Xavi says, although he clearly doesn’t, and hangs up. After that there’s a longer and longer lag each time he texts Xavi or Andres or even Leo, and he knows why. He’s done the same thing himself. There’s your team, and there’s everyone else, the people on the outside looking in. There’s the people who understand the pressure, whose lives are caught up in the line-up changes and who did well in practice and who might be transferring; a hundred thousand little details that are walled into Camp Nou. David knows he’s not part of that anymore. He stops trying to be.  
  
David’s still viciously, horrible bored though. He divides his day into segments - wake up, eat breakfast, clean, work out, shower, eat lunch, shop for dinner, fuck around and watch television for a few hours, cook dinner, eat dinner, washing up. It’s after that, at night, when he’s run out of things to do and sick of himself, that he runs into trouble. Sometimes he goes for another run. Sometimes he watches darts. Sometimes he gets drunk, by himself. One night, two weeks after Xavi’s call, he texts David Silva.  
  
_Hows it going?_  
  
He barely has time to put his phone down on the counter before it buzzes.  
  
_Not bad. Preseason stuff is starting soon so i’ll be back in milan._  
  
_Cool. You going anywhere good for preseason?_  
  
_The US. Should be ok, at least the flights shorter than asia_  
  
It’s nothing earth-shattering, but Silva keeps responding, every time David texts him, and David can’t help the little burst of happiness he gets every time his phone buzzes for the rest of the night, as he watches darts on tv, as he does his dishes.  
  
David wakes up the next morning and checks his texts first thing. There’s another text from Silva, a picture of a store window filled with DSquared stuff, Silva standing next to it all making a bitch face. David texts him back,  _haha very funny_  and decides to go on a morning run today instead, while he waits for Silva to text him back.  
  
He’s about halfway through his run, his mind wandering, when suddenly he feels like he’s been run over by a truck. He likes when Silva texts him, likes the dopamine rush, the little burst of approval, the arrogant way it makes him feel - of course Silva still won’t ignore him, even now. He never could. When they were at Valencia, and later, after the transfers, David used to fuck Silva pretty often, at away games and at call-ups. He even visited him in England once or twice, and Silva came down to Barcelona a little more often than that. They talked on the phone for hours and sent funny emails and some truly impressive sexts (if David says so himself) and Silva demonstrably, desperately wanted him.  
  
David got off on it. Whatever he felt for - feels for - Silva, the jumble of memories and emotions and reactions he keeps buried within himself, he never doubted how badly Silva wanted him. Sometimes he’d ignore calls, let them go to voicemail and then not call back for days. Sometimes during a call-up he’d ignore Silva during practice, take Andres as his stretching partner, look past Silva, look through him, just so that after curfew, when he texted Silva to get to his room, now, Silva would come to him already slicked up and ready, would push David down onto the bed and ride him and say his name over and over, would give him everything. David liked making Silva prove how much he wanted it, liked making Silva beg in his silent proud way.  
  
It makes him sick, now, to think about, tight fear in his chest. He wonders if he’s any better than his father - if he inherited his quick temper and his dark eyes and also his inability to love anyone more than he loved himself, his casual cruelty and his demanding affections.  
  
He runs until he can barely keep going, lactic acid screaming in his legs. He takes a long shower, sends Silva a stupid picture of his closet, full of DSqaured, emails his mom, goes back to sleep.  
  
David wakes up to the bright light of noon. His phone tells him he has a new text, from Silva, and an email from his mom. He reads the email first. It says:  
  
David,  
  
I hope you are doing ok! It was good to hear from you after so long. I understand why you’re worried but I don’t think you could do what he did. The difference between you is how hard you try and how much you want to be better. He thought he was too good for the mine but he never did anything about it, and even when you were six, you wanted to be a footballer and wanted something better. If you’re worried you’re acting like him, I know you will push yourself now to be better too.  
  
Love you.  
  
David gets lightheaded, the way he sometimes used to in front of goal, where everything’s so simple it seems like a dream, like reality’s just a thin curtain to be ripped apart. He texts Silva:  _I’m thinking about moving to Milan._  
  
\--  
  
A month later, David’s sitting in a wood-paneled cafe in Milan, a few blocks from the Duomo. He’s drinking coffee and trying to start his Italian homework. It’s not as confusing as David thought it would be. Blah blah present tense blah blah, David’s got this on lock. He just needs to learn some good curses.  
  
Silva comes into the cafe. David doesn’t need to look up to know it, though he does; some of the tourists around him are turning and murmuring to each other. David can’t tell if it’s because they recognize him, or if it’s just because he’s wearing skin-tight jeans and a white button-down. He looks like a model.  
  
Silva scans the room. His face changes, lights up, and it kills David to think that but it’s true, when he sees David. Silva takes the sea opposite David, and David shuts his Italian text book.  
  
“How was your day?” Silva asks.  
  
“It was ok,” David says. “I had Italian in the morning, then my relator like, took me to look at this apartment. Except it had an entire glass wall, and I don’t think I could keep that clean. Plus I’d always be afraid I was about to fall out of it.”  
  
Silva raises one of his eyebrows and David kicks it under the table. “Whatever it’s a real concern,” David says. “It could happen.”  
  
“Sure it could,” Silva says, stealing some of David’s pastry.  
  
“Order your own,” David tells him.  
  
“I can’t,” Silva says, sadly. “Season’s starting, I’m on my diet.”  
  
“Also you can’t speak Italian,” David tells him. “So you wouldn’t be able to.”  
  
Silva gives him a smile, and David’s smiling back. His cheeks are starting to hurt. Silva takes more of his pastry. “I speak some Italian.”  
  
“Yeah, you know how to tell the ref you just got fouled.”  
  
Silva licks the crumbs off his fingers, which is an unfair way of settling an argument. “Hey, that’s more useful than asking for directions to the library, or whatever.”  
  
David brushes his knee up against Silva’s, under the table. Silva stiffens briefly, then relaxes into the contact. “I’m pretty sure being fluent in the language is always useful.”  
  
“I got by in England,” Silva says, shrugging.  
  
“So your defense for not speaking Italian is that you never spoke English?”  
  
Silva’s leg is warm against David’s thigh. It’s very distracting. “I’m just going to move somewhere else soon. Why bother getting comfortable?” Silva looks down briefly. “It’s. I mean, you know how it is. It’s an unsettled way to live, I don’t want to pretend I’m going to fit in somewhere I’m going to have to leave, anyway.”  
  
David doesn’t really have an answer to that, just his own sudden desire to distract himself, to learn something entirely new, to be someone entirely new, to be here, to be anywhere but home. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” he says, briefly and boldly squeezing Silva’s hand. Silva’s eyes go wide, but he doesn’t pull away.  
  
\--  
  
David’s staying with Silva, just until he finds his own apartment. Silva has a beautiful apartment, but it’s spare, nearly unfurnished. They share a bed, which is strange, something they’ve never done, but David likes it, likes falling asleep next to Silva and waking up beside him (his alarm goes off stupidly early, but still.) He likes the nights when they don’t have sex, when Silva’s worn out, run ragged from practice, and they lie together, fully clothed, with the lights on since David’s joints ache too much to stand up to turn them off. He likes the low rumble in Silva’s chest, when David lies on it and listens to him talk, late at night.  
  
One day when Silva’s at practice, David explores the neighborhood. There’s a little farm stand, tucked under an awning, wooden tables piled high with vegetables that David can’t name in Italian, yet. It’s run by a little old woman, a nonna straight out of David’s language exercises. He pulls out his phone and searches “good italian vegetables fall.” Porcini mushrooms, David thinks, looking over at where they’re stacked, brown, with dirt still clinging to them. That could be good risotto.  
  
He ends up buying more produce than he expected, carries it back to the apartment in plastic bags that cut into the palms of his hands. He cooks and listens to his language tapes until Silva comes home.  
  
“This is fancy,” Silva says, when he comes into the kitchen. David turns to look at him and Silva looks. David isn’t sure. His voice his flat, measured, his eyes inscrutable.  
  
“Do you mind?” David asks, awkwardly. “I like to cook.”  
  
“No,” David says, his voice softening, “no, I don’t mind.” He presses himself against David for a long moment, and David runs a hand through his hair, gently.  
  
\--  
  
“It’ll just make it harder,” Silva says, when they’re lying next to each other, post-coital, David pressing himself into Silva’s side and drifting off to sleep.  
  
“What?” he asks, kissing the nearest part of Silva to his mouth, which happens to be his shoulder.  
  
“Nothing,” Silva says. “Just. When you go. You cooking, that’ll make it harder.”  
  
“You can hire a chef,” David mutters into Silva’s skin. “You can hire me as your chef.” He means something else, something bubbling within him, something he can’t say yet since he’s afraid it isn’t true.  
  
“You can be my chef,” Silva tells him.  
  
“Good,” David says, and falls asleep.  
  
\--  
  
The sun’s setting early enough that the afternoon and the evening blend into one grey gradient, the streets wet with rain. The cars drive by sleek, their tires hissing in the wet, their headlights reflecting off the curved glass and metal of the storefronts: Winter settles damply on Milan.  
  
David loves it. He knows he shouldn’t, knows he should miss sunshine and the bright, clean smell of dry grass baking in the summer heat, the way the sun presses at his skin. It didn’t rain very often when he was a kid. But when it did, everyone else’s mother called them home and he had the expanse of the pitch to himself; he’d run and leave mud trails up his calves and his back, stain his ball dirty, and he was alone with the rain and the wind. Alone with his heartbeat and his pumping blood, alone and he was on the pitch at Wembley - in England the land of rain and darkness and heavy tackles - in front of a jeering crowd winning the World Cup, at the Bernabeu, inside the crumbling walls of the Maracanã, alone and anywhere but home.  
  
When it got dark, he’d walk slowly back through the village. His mom would make him take off his kit in the hallway, leave his cleats by the heater and send him up to shower. At night he’d open his windows and listen to the rain fall heavy on the rooftop, pretend that it drowned off his father’s raised voice and his mother’s shaking replies.  
  
So he likes the rain. He buys a wool coat with a collar he can turn up to keep his neck dry, and still walks to the vegetable stand every other day. His Italian is a lot better.  
  
Today there’s fennel, heavy bulbs of it with soft fronds. At the base, they’re pale green gradually darkening to the full verdant color of a football pitch.  
  
David grabs a couple bulbs. He doesn’t know how to cook them but his Italian books keep telling him to ask the produce stall owners how they recommend you prepare their wares. Can’t hurt to try.  
  
He gets his wallet out and heads over to where Nonna Whoever is sitting.  
  
“Excuse me,” he says, “but,” he pauses, frustrated. He wants to use that conditional but it’s a bitch to remember. “How do you cook this, please?”  
  
Nonna raises one eyebrow and purses her lip. “Twenty euros,” she says. Her bitch face makes it pretty clear that no one’s getting any stereotypical cooking advice from the natives today.  
  
“Fine I’ll go on the internet,” David says to her, in Spanish. “And if you were wondering why no one calls their grandmothers anymore, this is why.”  
  
“Ciao,” she says, and if David didn’t know better he’d think it was Italian for “jump off a bridge.”  
  
“Someone’s still mad about Euros,” David mutters, slinging his shopping bag over his shoulder.  
  
\--  
  
“What you making?” Silva asks, leaning over David’s shoulder to peer into the bowl on the counter. His chin rests on David’s shoulder, the line of his body presses against David’s back. David turns and kisses the creases around the corner of his eye. Silva makes a soft, surprised noise and David goes back to tossing the salad, making sure that the olive oil is evenly distributed.  
  
“It’s fennel and blood orange salad,” David says. “To go with the roast chicken. Here, try it, does it need more salt?” He reaches into the bowl and grabs out a little bite. Silva kind of tenses for some reason as David reaches up to feed him. Which is weird, Silva’s not a neat freak; David’s seen him eat things off the floor before with a little grin.  
  
“Don’t worry David, my hands are clean,” David tells him.  
  
Silva makes a funny little noise. He leans forward a little bit more and gently eats the bite off David’s fingers, his lips soft and hot. He sucks on the pads of David’s fingers for just a moment, his tongue darting out. David grins and leans his body back against Silva’s.  
  
“Tastes great to me,” Silva says, running his hands down David’s back to rest on his hips, turning him and holding him against the counter. He kisses David and David kisses back, buries a hand in Silva’s hair and uses his other hand to pull Silva in closer. He’ll get oil on Silva’s shirt, but who cares?  
  
After a long time, Silva breaks away. He’s still standing close, wrapped around David, keeping him pressed up against the counter. He meets David’s eyes for a long time. David ruffles his hair and Silva smiles, soft.  
  
“Don’t go anywhere,” Silva says, pressing his face into David’s neck. “You don’t get to do this and then. Just. Don’t go anywhere.”  
  
“I’m right here,” David says, kissing Silva’s forehead through the soft wave of his bangs, wrapping his arms around Silva’s waist. “I won’t, I wouldn’t. Don’t worry.”  
  
Silva gives a sad laugh at that. “I’ll try not to,” he says, in a way that makes David hate everything he’s ever done, every call he’s missed and text he’s ignored; that makes David regret ten years of feigning casual. For missing this, but mostly for doing this.  
  
They stay like that until the timer pings gently and David has to get the chicken out of the oven. Silva sets the table, and they eat and talk about how the day went, the stupid tourists David saw in the street, how long the rain will last, Juventus’s back line until Silva’s smiling again.  
  
\--  
  
Just before Christmas, David’s realtor comes over to the apartment. She has glossy photos of some new places she wants David to see, and David’s made a white bean stew with rosemary, to drizzle with olive oil later. They sit in the kitchen and flip through view books. Silva comes home, and David introduces him; they all eat dinner together and talk about rent prices and walking to the Armani boutique. It’s nice.  
  
After dinner, David shows the realtor out and comes back into the kitchen to find Silva sitting at the table, his head in his hands.  
  
“Are you ok?” David asks, startled.  
  
“I thought is was just a booty call,” Silva says, softly.  
  
David’s incredulous, wants to laugh with it. “You thought I was pretending to move to Milan so I could shack up with you for a few days?”  
  
Silva looks up and meets David’s eyes. “Yes,” he says, simply.  
  
Oh, David thinks, hating the man he used to be, the man who made Silva mistrust dinners and nights together and early mornings, Italian conversation tapes and long coffees at cafes. “I would have just said that, then. I fucking hired a realtor. I’m learning Italian.” He pauses. “That’s a lot of work for a booty call.”  
  
Silva cracks a smile, the skin around his eyes wrinkling. “You’re moving to Milan.”  
  
David smiles back. “I’ve already done that. Everything I own is in storage.”  
  
Silva stands, moving across the room towards David.“Call the realtor, tell her you’ve found a place. I have plenty of room here.” He wraps his arms around David’s waist, rests his head on David’s shoulder.  
  
“You’re sure?” David asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Silva says, and David feels his soft smile against his shoulder. “I have plenty of room.”  
  
\--  
  
The next morning, David wakes up with Silva. Silva gets dressed like a responsible working adult, but David just wraps a blanket around his shoulders and shuffles into the kitchen in his pajamas to get the coffee started. Outside the door, there’s a copy of  _Corriere della Sera_ , and David goes to pick that up too. By the time Silva gets to the kitchen, David’s sitting at the table reading the paper, even though he still has to look up half the words.  
  
They don’t usually talk much in the mornings, but even that, that they have a “usually,” that winter is here in Italy and David is here with it, this morning it’s rising in his chest like helium, higher and uncontainable.  
  
David reaches out to grab Silva’s arm as Silva walks around the table for more coffee, pulls Silva in for a long kiss. When they break apart Silva’s smiling at him, his eyes still fuzzy with sleep, and David’s smiling back. Today he’ll buy something nice - truffles and wild boar and blood red wine that’s been waiting for decades, waiting for Silva’s lips and Silva’s mouth and the light of Silva’s eyes in a dark cellar. Tonight, he’ll make dinner for Silva and tell him everything.  
  
He kisses Silva again, because he can, and the rain falls steadily outside.


End file.
